The invention relates to a process and a device for for producing steel or aluminum, in particular for controlling a rolling mill for producing a rolled strip of steel or aluminum having specific material properties that depend on the structure of the steel or aluminum being produced from input materials. The material properties of the steel or aluminum are a function of operating parameters with which the plant is operated. The present invention also relates to the associated device for implementing the process.
The appropriate operating parameters are normally set by an operator of the metallurgical plant in such a way that the material properties of the steel or aluminum correspond to desired, predefined material properties. For this purpose, the operator usually has recourse to empirical knowledge which is stored, for example, in table form.
The object of an present invention is to provide a process and a device for implementing the process which make it possible to produce steel or aluminum whose material properties correspond more precisely to the material properties desired in advance.
According to the present invention, the objective is achieved by providing a process according to and a device in which, the operating parameters are determined by a structure optimizer as a function of the desired material properties of the steel or aluminum. In so doing, material properties such as yield point, proof stress, tensile strength, elongation at fracture, hardness, transition temperature, anisotropy and consolidation index of the steel or aluminum are particularly advantageously considered. The process of the present invention permits operating parameters of a metallurgical plant to be set in such a way that the steel or aluminum produced has the desired material properties.
In an advantageous refinement of the present invention, the structure optimizer has a structure observer which predicts the material properties of a steel or aluminum produced in a metallurgical plant as a function of its operating parameters. A structure observer of this type advantageously has a neural network.
In a further advantageous refinement of the present invention, the structure optimizer determines at least one of the variables: yield point, proof stress, tensile strength, elongation at fracture, hardness, transition temperature, anisotropy and consolidation index of the steel or aluminum as a function of the temperature, the degree of deformation or the relative deformation of the steel, the deformation speed and the alloying components of the steel.
In another advantageous refinement of the process according to the invention, the structure observer determines at least one of the variables: yield point, proof stress, tensile strength, elongation at fracture, hardness, transition temperature, anisotropy and consolidation index of the steel to be examined as a function of the individual alloying components in the steel. In this case, it has been shown to be particularly advantageous to determine at least one of the variables: yield point, proof stress, tensile strength, elongation at fracture, hardness and transition temperature as a function of the carbon portion, of the silicon portion, of the manganese portion, of the phosphorus portion, of the sulphur portion, of the cobalt portion, of the aluminum portion, of the chromium portion, of the molybdenum portion, of the nickel portion, of the vanadium portion, of the copper portion, of the tin portion, of the calcium portion, of the titanium portion, of the boron portion, of the niobium portion, of the arsenic portion, of the tungsten portion and of the nitrogen portion.
In a simple advantageous refinement of the present invention, the structure observer determines at least one of the variables yield point, proof stress, tensile strength, elongation at fracture, hardness, transition temperature, anisotropy and consolidation index of the steel to be examined as a function of the portion of carbon in the steel or of the carbon equivalent or of the useful and/or pollutant portions.